HOWARD:
>Admitting this essential role for human judgment
>should, in principle, help us to avoid making overblown claims for the
>certainty of our understanding of God and to instill in us the humility to
>certainty of our understanding of God and to instill in us the humility to
>respect those who describe their experience of God differently -- Jews,
>Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and the like.
ED: There is an old non-Christian parable that suggests God is like an
elephant but people from different religions are like blind men touching
the elephant in different places and trying to describe the entire
elephant as merely one part of the whole animal's anatomy. One feels a
leg and says an elephant is like a tree trunk, another feels an ear and
says an elephant is like a fan, another feel's its trunk and says an
elephant is like a snake. Is that what you mean by saying that Muslims,
Hindus, Buddhists, and the like, "experience God differently?"
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>
HOWARD:
> The biblical text need not
>be accurate by the standards of modern science or history. The biblical
>text
>need not be 100% internally consistent. We waste huge amounts of energy in
>need not be 100% internally consistent. We waste huge amounts of energy in
>trying to defend unrealistic claims about our revered text. The text can
>be
>revered and valuable to us even if it is a humanly crafted document.
>
ED: You mentioned the time being wasted defending "unrealistic claims"
about the Bible's revered text. But are you willing to specifically name
any "realistic claims" of specific events written about in the Bible,
i.e., specific events whose "reality" you are willing to defend based on
standards of modern science and history? What is your view say, of the Red
Sea being parted, or the resurrection stories in 1 Cor. and the Gospels?
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>
>
Received on Wed Oct 13 13:44:35 2004
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Wed Oct 13 2004 - 13:44:36 EDT